The Slytherin
by MelissaKatherine
Summary: Marta Blishwick was many things - insensitive, prejudiced, distrustful - but she was not a murderer, and not a sadist. This is the tale of her seventh year at Hogwarts and the choices she was forced to make. Probably not Neville/OC.


**Author's Note: It seemed so wrong that every Slytherin at Hogwarts chose not to fight in the Battle of Hogwarts, and that the few that returned battled for the wrong side. So, this is the year of the Carrows from a Slytherin's point of view, with as little romance as I can possibly manage and realistic characters.**

**There are, after all, plenty of reasons to switch sides or play at both.**

* * *

Classes were over for the day, and Marta had not the slightest clue what to do with the afternoon - nap, perhaps.

But, her insufferable roommates were heading down to the dungeons immediately and she was not a part of their group - tagging along would be too uncomfortable. Marta chose to delay the trip, turning away and wandering the halls to pass some time. In a smaller corridor on the third floor, someone literally ran into her.

The wind knocked out of her, she very nearly fell and barely caught herself. There was a moment of nothing but loud breathing before she glared up at her assailant's face, having already noted his Gryffindor tie.

His face looked awful, with three different colours of bruising across it, accompanied by swelling and a few green boils. It took her a moment to recognize the boy, but there were only two Gryffindor boys that tall, and this one was not blonde.

"Longbottom." She scowled, whipping out her wand.

He tensed, reaching for his own, but the sounds of laughter just a corridor over paralyzed him. Instinctively, Marta shoved him through a tapestry and froze it into place. With a warning to stay quiet, she slipped her wand back into her pocket, but did not release its handle.

She had only barely begun walking again when Blaise Zabini and Draco Malfoy turned the corner.

"Blishwick?" Zabini said, seemingly surprised but not displeased to see her.

"Good afternoon, Blaise - Draco." Marta made an effort to sound polite, although she wanted to grind her teeth.

"I heard your father is... Unwell." Malfoy's nostrils flared slightly.

"It's nothing terrible. Just inconvenient, he will recover soon enough." Marta answered - as if she believed either boy cared much about the man's health.

"Surely there is a potion for it?" Zabini asked pleasantly enough. He had always been the best at pretending, Marta sneered to herself.

"He happens to have allergies with the main component of all the relevant potions." This, at least, was true.

"That is unfortunate. I am surprised you did not apply to stay home this year and care for him."

"At the moment, that is beyond our means." Marta hoped the edge to her voice was just in her head.

"You can't pay the fine?" Malfoy blurted out, highly amused.

"The family fortune was seized when my father was arrested," as they surely knew, "and although the Ministry is looking into the matter, it appears our gold was divided amongst the Auror department and cannot be reclaimed." She was clenching her teeth. Quietly.

"That is a pity. A great family such as yours, forced to wear rags." Zabini's sympathetic tone held a derisive edge. Marta swallowed down the tide of emotions the sentence had brought her.

Confrontations like this were exactly why she should have fled the country.

Hearing a slight scuffling sound, Marta forced a smile and hoped that clerkspeak could end this. "Well, out of poverty we will surely rise. Our humble shoppe sells nothing less than the best, after all. The quality will receive the attention it deserves soon enough."

"No doubt. Good day, Blishwick." Zabini spoke dismissively, apparently seeing that there was little point in mocking her further. Malfoy seemed rather disappointed, but gave a nod.

"Good day." Marta agreed, moving away when they did. Her smile dropped and she hurried after she was out of sight, going into an empty classroom and opening the closet in the back. Longbottom looked more like himself in the low lighting from either hallway.

"Get out." She droned. "And fix your face up, it's disgusting."

Marta expected the Gryffindor to shove past her instantly. When he didn't, she stepped back a couple of feet, glare intensifying as he left the closet but did not move towards the door. "Thank you." He mumbled, so quietly she barely heard him.

Marta bristled at those words of gratitude. "I wasn't helping you. If they'd seen you walking with me, they would have made assumptions." In her sudden mood, she snapped at him. Realizing that it was not proper at all for a girl of her blood to get worked up so easily, and by something as relatively benign as a 'thank you', she turned on her heel and left in a hurry, angrily flustered.

Marta could not explain easily what about common courtesies drove her up the wall, but she knew the usual insincerity and casualness about it all contributed. Most people did not mean it when they said 'thank you' or 'sorry' or 'how are you', and it really did drive her mad. Words like those should hold meaning, and they could not when they were tossed around so easily.

Irritated, Marta made for the first floor. She had found a few years back that screaming at Moaning Myrtle was quite therapeutic. Myrtle was a perverted, annoying, insensitive imprint of a girl who had died a long time before. She had been a fourth year, friendless and poor. Marta had drawn parellels and felt empathy when they first met, but after the events of second year it became clear that Myrtle had been a mudblood.

After that revelation, Marta had quit trying to convince the overly dramatic ghost of her dissimularities to some girl named Olive Hornby and taken to mocking her with outward zeal. It was still difficult not to see herself in Myrtle, and she could not help blaming that invisible soft spot for what she had just done.

No matter what assurances she heard, it was troubling to see the blank spaces at the other tables, to see Professor - Headmaster - Snape in that chair and know how many people had died in the last four months.

Blood traitors or mudbloods, surely, but they had been alive - and now they were not. Her morals about blood purity had always been ambiguous, although she knew better than to talk to anyone. With the events of the summer, doubts were no longer troubling. They were life-threatening, and Marta wanted to live.

Therefore, she banished her thoughts as she pushed open the door. "Filthy as always," She sneered, strutting in as if she owned the place, although nobody in their right mind would wish to. "Are you hoping adding some mold will make you less..."

* * *

**End Note: Well, that's Marta. I do not intend to break canon to pieces, and that's the only thing I'm explaining. Anyone interested in seeing more?**


End file.
